Angling
by rhyme time
Summary: It's too short for a summary. Set in season 10.


Title: Angling  
Author: rhyme time  
Disclaimer: Not mine, only borrowing.  
Rating: T, because I label everything T, just in case  
Spoilers: Set in Season 10.  
Author's Notes: At the end.

He is standing in the corner of the kitchen, backed into the space where two solid pieces of granite meet and form a perfect right angle. One hand rests on the granite countertop and is cold, the other holds his cup of coffee and is hot. Sometimes, epiphanies are this simple and easy, or maybe he's just tired and this metaphor is much more profound in his mind than it should be.

"What's it going to take?" he asks.

She stirs creamer into her coffee. Hazelnut. "I'm sorry. What?" she asks, closing the red, plastic cap on the creamer, returning it to the door of their refrigerator. She fumbles through her day planner for her plane ticket, wanting to confirm that she does, in fact, have a 6:30 a.m. flight.

"I broke every rule I ever made for myself. For you," he says too calmly, and she turns around, her cup of coffee in one hand, her plane ticket in the other. "For over a year, I let this relationship be what you needed it to be, or didn't need it to be. I followed you to Costa Rica. I followed you here. I married you. I love you more than I've loved everyone else in my life combined and even then, everyone else pales in comparison to you. So, tell me, what's it going to take to keep you with me?"

Her coffee cup slips in her hand and does its best impersonation of a teapot, pouring hot coffee onto the floor.

"Gil," she stalls nervously, her gaze shifting from his face. "I am with you."

He laughs. "You do realize you're holding a plane ticket in your hand," he says, wrapping his hand around hers, righting her coffee cup.

His shoes are soaked.

She blinks rapidly and sets down her plane ticket and coffee cup. Quickly, she grabs a towel off the island and begins mopping up the mess.

"Sara, leave the coffee," he says.

He feels the sweep of a towel over his shoes.

"Let me just get this," she insists.

"Sara," he says, putting down his cup. He crouches in front of her and with his hand under her jaw, gently lifts her head so that she is forced to look at him. "What the hell are you doing?" he asks.

She shrugs her shoulders. "I'm cleaning up the mess," she answers.

"You know what I mean," he asserts.

"I know," she replies, "and I answered you."

"We can't keep living this way," he whispers.

She looks at the floor, at the swirl of brown and white. "We are living this way."

Standing up, she straightens her suit and rinses out the towel in the sink. She wrings it out and sets it to the side, pours out the rest of her coffee. Her plane ticket has a large, brown ring on it.

He puts his hands on her hips, pushes up against her just enough so that she's pressed against the counter, facing away from him. She can feel his breath on the curve of her ear.

"I know what you're doing," he whispers, his lips brushing against her cheek.

"Do you?" she asks.

"Yes," he says. "Your whole life has been one disappointment or tragedy after another. Nothing good has ever lasted. You're happy with me and that scares you to death." His hands trace the lines of her body, pause briefly at her breasts, but keep going until his arms form an x across her chest, binding her to him. "You're scared something is going to happen or that I'm going to leave or that we're going to fall apart, and so subconsciously you're creating a situation that will put stress on our marriage and will ultimately serve as a test. Always a scientist, my Sara. You need to know, you have to know if I'm in this for the long haul."

"How did you form this hypothesis?" she questions evenly.

He holds her tighter. "It's what I spent six years doing to you, sweetheart."

"Grissom," she exhales, and it hurts, her favorite name for him. It has always struck her as ironic that when she was allowed to call him Gil, she found that preferred Grissom.

Grissom is the man she met as a young woman. Grissom is her best friend. Grissom is the man who hurt her and loves her, he is the one with whom she worked the bad cases and then the worse cases, he is the one who took her home and took her to bed, he is the man in all her memories, in all her dreams. Gil has always felt more like a stranger, like someone she should know but doesn't, not really.

He feels the tension in her body slacken. "Just let it go, Sara," he tells her, although his tone, the desperation barely concealed in each syllable, transforms his words into an entreaty. He can bear this for her, for them.

She bows her head and kisses the point at which his arms cross her body.

On the counter is her plane ticket, the brown ring of coffee circling her departure time like a bullseye.

She pulls away from him and he lets her go. What can he do but let her go?

In the morning, when he opens his eyes and she is gone, he wonders if they are living perpendicular lives and if they've already passed the point where they intersect.

At what point was that anyway? At what point was it perfect?

He closes his eyes and tries to remember.

/END/

Author's Notes: This fic was inspired by someone that reviewed another of my fics. We exchanged PMs, and in the course of our conversation I mentioned, somewhat jokingly, that "being engaged to Grissom wasn't enough to keep Sara in Vegas, and being married to Grissom isn't enough to keep Sara in Paris," and as a result my writer's brain whirred to life. Thanks, JellybeanChiChi.


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